“Now I’m over it,” he writes of the various stupidities that excite young people today, things such as hot-beverage cups “with smartass sayings on them.” Bah! “Life itself is good enough. Is there anyone with a more reassuring bedside manner when addressing the subject of aging? Hard to imagine. (The book was written during the COVID-19 lockdown.) Doctor Keillor is here to help us fathom what is happening to our bodies and our minds as we journey toward our inevitable demise. He then sprints into a roundabout telling of his life these last couple of years. A whole decade to enjoy clocks ticking, fresh coffee, a walk in the park, deep-fried cheese curds and chili dogs, singing ‘Under African Skies’ with a tall woman, the pictures on my phone of my wife and my daughter …” Here we are, mid-book: “Maybe I have 10 more years. It is perhaps even more effective if you can imagine the author’s distinctive baritone reading it aloud in the long, languid sentences for which he is known. It is wise and witty and also mordantly funny in the way that only a transcendent humorist could pull off.
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I have scribbled notes on practically every page of Serenity at 70. His definitive memoir, That Time of Year, was published not so long ago, in 2020, but this newer one stands apart for its singular focus on aging and, too, Keillor’s lack of major regrets, because what’s the point? You learn from experiences and hope to do better in your remaining days, which are fewer, and therefore exponentially more precious, with each rising sun. No, no, he corrected, it’s actually “a memoir with an essay wrapped around it.” “It’s a novelty book, a gift book,” she ventured after a long pause. I asked Kate Gustafson, president of Keillor’s production company, how she’d characterize the work. Serenity at 70, Gaiety at 80 is a playful yet deeply felt meditation that ought to be a standard in the literature of human aging. It’s a 90-page self-published masterwork about the inexorable decrepitude that accompanies old age - but, more importantly, also the manifold pleasures that accrue as you arrive there. Not coincidentally, the second of his new books is likewise about moving on. He’s written nearly 20 novels about that lovably odd hamlet “where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.” With a cadre of new-think millennials descending on the place he invented, the story he unwinds in Boom Town is essentially Keillor’s gentle way of bidding farewell to his long-running franchise and moving on.
#Garrison keillor series
One, Boom Town, is probably the last in his series about the characters who populate Lake Wobegon, Minnesota. In fact, Keillor has two new books just out.
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Most of the ones I know are kind of winding down. That may be a rare occurrence for a writer.
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“What I have is a pleasure in writing that is greater than it used to be. “I feel like I’m starting a new life as a writer,” he says to me.
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And because he is sort of a genius and also hyper-self-aware, Keillor, who will be 80 this year, is savoring this special time. He is different, but contented, because he is, undeniably, old. No more heavy drinking in the hours following a sold-out performance, no more headlining at the Hollywood Bowl, no more racing between airports, no more dealing with corporate overseers, no more unhappiness at home. Which, in a real sense, describes Garrison Keillor himself at this moment in his long, illustrious life. “The first sentence is, I got into the music business in the hopes I would find a girlfriend who would love and admire me,” he tells me over the phone later that day. Now, in the dead quiet well before dawn, he was typing on his laptop the beginning of what he believes he will title The LowBoys. Hours before, he was entertaining an enthusiastic local audience with tales of life in his famously fictional town of Lake Wobegon. Garrison Keillor woke up in a Carrollton, Georgia, hotel room one recent morning and immediately realized that the idea for a swell new novel had blossomed in his brain overnight.